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Panorama view of exhibition in Jedlitschka Gallery, Zurich.

22 April 2015

My exhibition is titled "The 'Hood in miim Chopf." This is a
combination of American English slang and Swissgerman dialect. In full
English "The Neighborhood in My Head" and in Hochdeutsch, "Die
Nachbarschaft in meinem Kopf." I show largely outside my living area
nowadays. In the gallery that represents me in Zurich, Jedlitschka
Gallery, or in Italy, New York, Chicago, elsewhere in Europe and so on.
When I was asked to exhibit in the exhibition space of the Vadian bank, I
had to think of something appropriate to being there. That is one of my
joys as an artist, to work in what I call "Contextually Specific" ways.
My work generally merges painting with installation, sign-painting and
sequential art, often with a central conceptual framework that comes
from the context of where it is being shown.

I decided that since
the location was somewhat local, I would make it a celebration of the
VERY local. I decided to do portraits of people who live near me in the
village of Trogen, AR, people with whom I have regular contact. Thus
neighbors. That is my "Viertel", or as we say it in the US, my " 'Hood."
However, then I thought to expand it a bit, to bring it into our mobile
present. I added to the group people who I see regularly, who I feel to
be my neighbors, but who do not live directly near me. Thus, the
neighborhood in my head, in my thoughts. These are people in Trogen, St.
Gallen, the local artworld, Liechtenstein and more. Ones I talk to and
think about.

Each portrait consists of two panels. The first is an
image of their face in my style, in a variation I call
"drawing-paintings" as they are somewhere between those two media. The
second panel is of a thing they chose, or I chose for them, that
represents them in some way. Die verschmelzen Einflüsse von Jackson
Pollock, R.B. Kitaj, Jacopo Tintoretto, Schrift-Malereimeiner Vater Earl
Brandl, und dem Comic/Sequenzielle-Kunst-Zeichner Gene Colan. Sie
scheinen mit geschleuderten Tropfen von Schildmaler-Email-Farbe
gestaltet zu sein. Aber die Striche und Linien verwandeln sich zu
Repräsentationen ihrer selbst. I do visual philosophy in slang. In the
Renaissance and Baroque arists would often paint objects that were
synecdoches from the interests of the sitter. I always loved that, this
is my version. In the Vernissage, you can ask the individuals what the
objects are and why.

One more conceptual aspect. The paintings are
for sale in pairs, as together they make up the portrait. However, the
individual subject, those people who I represented have also the option
of proposing a barter with me. A Gegengeschäft or Tauschhandel.
Especially since most are not collectors: What they could do or the like
for me in exchange for their portrait.

Welcome to an aspect of my
world in the Ostschweiz. Thank you to Walter Ernst and the Vadian Bank,
and all the people in the pictures for this possibility and allowing
this strange trade.